Sunday, November 25, 2018
Sunday Reflection: Randall O'Brien's job well done
Randall O'Brien is retiring as President of Carson-Newman University in Tennessee at the end of next month. As is true everyplace else he has been, he leaves it a better place.
I have attended and worked at a bunch of universities, and never came across a president like Randall. He obviously loved the students, and talked about them every chance he had. And not only did he talk about them, he also talked to them, and it was impossible to walk ten paces on campus with him without being interrupted, wonderfully, by a student with a question or-- just as often-- who was about to be questioned by Randall. You know that great feeling you have when you can tell that other people love someone that you love? That's what it was like to see these encounters.
Of course, I'm one of those students. Technically, we were co-teachers, but let's not fool ourselves. Randall and Hulitt Gloer taught me every week we supposedly "co-taught" our Oral Advocacy class at Baylor. They taught me to preach, but that was not the most important thing. They taught me how to seek out the dignity and talent in my students when perhaps they did not see it themselves, how to trust myself in my teaching, and how to care about a class as a whole.
He is retiring from this presidency and the success he had there, but he will not, cannot, retire as my friend and mentor. That, I could not fathom.
I'm wildly blessed. And one of those blessings has been the friendship and leadership of Randall O'Brien.
